No problem, if you have question from my critique please let me know. Additionally if you did wish to read my work you can find my current post at this [Link](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/rsixa6/4418_the_dragon_artist_scene_two/).

Thank you very much for your feedback, I appreciate it! If you want to post a link to your own work I would be happy to trade you a critique when it's ready.

Now I’m going to look at the next part of the story as pretty much one scene on its own. This would be the dialog and actions between the main character, Alune, and Leothe. This scene again suffers from being too much too packed together. This is made especially problematic because of all the names of people and story-specific terms we need to learn here.  While you have to introduce us to some terms here, I would suggest slowing down and saving some of them for a later scene. For example, I don’t need to know the name of the two or three other members of the main characters’ old Spyradors team that are dropped at the end of the scene. 

What do I need? The main character’s name earlier than it’s dropped currently. I know it can be tricky to find a natural place to drop a name in first person, but you’ve got so many chances in the guard scene. Just have a guard drop the main character’s name sometime in the first set of dialog, problem solved. 

Now that we know our hero is Cazra we ca

Hello, thanks for posting your chapter.

Before I begin, I just want to say that I’m going to assume for this critique that this is meant to be a chapter from a book-length story rather than a short story. You didn’t state one way or the other, but that was my impression.
To start with your first question, no I didn’t really find this story interesting yet. However, I think this was primarily an issue of tone and over pushing of worldbuilding in what felt like too small a box. Additionally, you’ve got a lot of character charmed into a relatively tiny space, both named and unnamed. I think potentially the biggest thing your story could benefit from is some decompression, making more focused scenes that focus on fewer things and fewer people. 

I think a good example of the character problem is your first 58 words. The introduction is a critical time to introduce us to your world and story, every piece of information in it is important. And we’re presented with an unnamed Main character 

Oh before I forget, there are some sentences that I think you should know about. That sentence with the phrase “Leothe sensed it like blood in water”. That sentence was kind of weird and confusing. I had to think for a moment and the only thing that came to mind was a shark. Not a lot of people are going to realize that and might be thrown off. Humans can’t really sense blood in water so the sentence overall is confusing.

If you send me a private message with the link when it is posted I will get to it.

Thanks. I’ll post it soon but can you first tell me how to add the link to this comment on my post? I really don’t know how to do it.

Thank you very much for your feedback, I appreciate it! I will definitely tidy up a few of the awkward phrases and do another pass at editing since I seemed to have missed a few things. I'm glad you enjoyed this piece.

If you have a work you would like me to critique you can post it and I'll take a look.

As a whole, it is interesting. I don’t know if you had written another story before this so if you did I’m not familiar with this world. But based on the context Spyrador seems to be a type of warrior or person part of a certain organization. If you plan to elaborate on this word later on the story then you don’t really have to change anything involving the word. Rem comes across as a type of magic and Deislands seems to be a certain place. 

The dialogue mostly makes —including the interruptions— sense except for a few words that confused me a bit. “The weak of will” sounded a little weird to me. “I clamped down on my tongue.” Maybe just replace clamp with “bit”. Maybe it’s just me but it sounded a little off to me. “I would have tidied up if I had received my summons in advance,” also sounds kind of weird to me. Perhaps you should rewrite it as something like “I would have tidied up if I had known I would be summoned here in advance.” And also “Why are we entertaining this idiocy?” T

Thank you very much for your feedback, I appreciate it!

As a follow up, if you'd like to post a piece of writing I'd be happy to critique it for you when you're ready. Happy new year!

(3/3)   

**Prose**   

Okay, this one might feel like a stab in the heart, but I really didn’t like the prose. To me it felt pretentious at times and lacked meaningful descriptions. An example:  

> The man slammed a mailed fist onto the oaken table, launching a stack of carefully curated reports into the air that were left to tumble as he steamed. “A window is much more than an animal like you deserves.”   

What did I learn from this? The man wears chainmail and sits at an oaken table with reports on it. What does this tell me about him? Nothing, really. Chainmail tells me he’s a fighter, but the carefully curated reports say otherwise. And would an administrator just throw them off the table? This description is quite conflicting and tells me nothing about the character. 28 words were wasted on this, when “he slammed his fist on the table” would’ve sufficed. (It shows that he’s quick to anger)   

There were a lot of comparisons in this piece. They can definitely work, but many of 

(2/3)   

**Dialogue**   

As I said in the introduction, I believe your dialogue is – for the most part – competently written. Subtext and voice can be used to lift it to another level, but they are beyond the scope of this critique. I recommend you google these things or perhaps watch some YouTube video’s on them.   

There’s one piece of dialogue in particular that I have a problem with, namely:   

>“Let’s do it.” A raspy voice said, before another kick. “Why keep ‘im alive? Send a message to the rest. The war killed my brother and every time they want to see this one they always throw ‘im back. I’m sick of it. Do it and make it hurt.”

This feels too expository and doesn’t serve a purpose (the part about his brother). That’s not something someone would say to someone, realistically. Either the other guards already know already, or they don’t – in which case he wouldn’t make such an off-handed comment at such an inconvenient time.   

Two general problems with the dialogue are dial

(1/3)   

Hi there, thanks for sharing.   

I apologise in advance if my critique comes off as too harsh. I will do my best to give constructive criticism and I will try to point out up front when a segment of this critique is due to my personal taste. That being said:   

**First impressions**   

I will be completely honest with you, as I believe that that will be most useful to you: I did not enjoy my first read. The story failed to grab me and unfortunately I had to force myself to go back to reading on multiple occasions. If I were asked to sum up my first impression in one word, it would be “confusing”. The first few paragraphs of your story are good, and I enjoyed them. However, I felt the story – both plot and prose – took quite a dive from there on. From page two and onward I got increasingly confused by the story. Many names were introduced and I had trouble keeping them apart from one another, let alone keep track of everyone’s relations to one another.   

I must say that I

Also, the first line's weak. There's a few ways to make it stronger. You can say something controversial. Something sarcastical. Something very descreptive. Or be very bold. 

"My throat has never been drier"

    “Up.”
    “No.”
    “Going to make us drag you out of that cell again?”
    “Yes.”
    “That didn’t go so well for you last time.”
    “Then why did you bring four more men?”

---

The voices here are exactly the same to my ears. There's different dimensions to dialogue and how to improve it. From motivations to accents to quirky words. I reckon learning how to differentiate charachter needs and wanta is more important than accents. Im nowhere near that good though.

Here's an example of how you could make it different. 

---

    “Up with you scum.”
    
I sat still.

    “Going to make us drag you out of that cell again?”
   
I made no answer.

    “That didn’t go so well for you last time.”
     "Hah. Tell those pretty men you brought to piss off and we'll see."

Blurb: Cazra Crestius is released from prison to track down his best friend who cut his throat and abandoned him.  

Text: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15yqSsRHOCAcAOJF-G8ILO8CU94wc3SLCK1alNoAzSO8/edit  

Critiques: [(1083) Aljis](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/rmlv3s/1083_aljis_ruination_part_1/hppc51m/)  

[(3607)Mala of Mine](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/rdamw3/3607_malaofmine/ho1db5r/)  

Questions for the piece:  
1. Is it, as a whole, interesting?
2.Do the new terms I introduce make sense in context (Spyrador, Rem, Deislands, etc)  
3. How's my dialogue with interruptions? Does it make sense?  
4. Does the final part of the piece, where Cazra reaches for his magic, hit the way that I want it to? I feel this is the weakest part but it's important to establish just how much he can't stand Sigrien.  
5. Other thoughts?  

Thank you!

[3214] The Only War That Matters Ch. 1